Embracing Change

Before she became her generation's young superstar--and before she came to possess everything that title entailed--Judy Ann wanted to be like other girls. She would look with envy at their accessories, piles of designer clothes, branded shoes and bags, and jewelry, and hope that one day, she might have those things too. But as a struggling young actress, she couldn't afford them. "Feeling ko walang chance na magkaroon [ako] ng ganoon karaming accessories. Yun yung pangarap ko talaga, na sana one day, mamroblema naman ako kung ano'ng isusuot ko kasi ang daming nakalatag sa harapan ko, hindi ko alam kung ano'ng uunahin ko."

Now, she is referred to as a fashion icon. The formerly overweight eight-year-old who could only dream of having her own accessories and expensive designer brands is now a regular fixture on the cover of countless glossy fashion magazines, photographed by the country's premiere lensmen. How did she go from that to this?

The long road to developing her personal style began during the Mara Clara days, when people would give her jewelry, but for an entirely different reason. "Nagkaroon ako ng chance makapag-ipon ng alahas 'nung Mara Clara days. Kasi si Kuya Eruel (Tongco, her co-star), tuwing may eksenang sasabunutan niya ako, o sasampalin ako, ang bayad noon sa akin, hikaw, o bracelet, o kuwintas. 'Yun ang reward niya sa kanya. Dumadating na sa point na sasabihin niya kay Direk Emil Cruz, 'Huwag ka na maglagay ng eksenang may sampalan!' "she laughs.

But at that point, Judy Ann still had a long way to go. The most important component of developing a personal style, the final piece of the fashion puzzle, was still missing. She had no confidence, and that was something money couldn't buy. It wasn't something people could give her. For that, she would have to reach into herself. Her early experiments with fashion--like when she showed up at an ABS-CBN party wearing blue velvet leggings with a blue and red polo--left her scared about exercising her power of choice when it came to what to wear. She was reluctant to appear on magazine covers because she didn't want to be laughed at. "Duwag lang talaga ako," Judai says of how she felt about getting a make-over. "Hindi lang talaga ako confident kung ano ang kalalabasan, kasi baka pangit."

Losing weight was a huge confidence booster. Then good friends from the industry--makeup artists, fashion designers, stylists and photographers--helped her with the rest, offering words of encouragement that helped her form a better sense of who she was visually. "People na nakilala ko, who made me feel confident kung sino man ako, I was able to reinvent myself because of these people," she says. "Kumbaga, wala namang mawawala at mas may mawawala kapag hindi ko ginawa."

She recalls when she first appeared on the cover of a magazine. "Everybody was raving about it. 'Dun na-boost ng 200 percent 'yung confidence ko," Judai beams. " Nagdire-diretso na 'ko. And I realized that you have to give reinvention a try."

Now, she's no longer tentative, scared, unsure when it comes to fashion. Her sense of frugality will stop her from blowing upwards of P50,000 on a Louis Vuitton bag (whenever she buys jewelry, if it costs more than P50,000, "pinag-iisipan ko muna"; her biggest splurge was an eternity ring that she bought a year and a half ago at a jewelry store at Shangri-La, but only after the owner agreed to give her a "sobrang discounted price), but now, fashion is no longer the problem. Judy Ann now dreams of bigger and better things, and occasionally, more expensive ones too. "Tumitingin pa rin ako sa price tags, pero minsan, sinasabi ko sa sarili ko, 'Deserve ko naman ito.' Tapos hindi na ako bibili for a while. Quota na ako."

Taken from Starstudio magazine: Judy Ann Santos special issue

'Weighty' Issues

Judy Ann never got the chance to meet her idol Julie Vega, but she almost felt like she did because some of the people Vega worked with on Anna Liza, like Renato del Prado and Juan Rodrigo, she worked with in Mara Clara. These people became her surrogate parents. One of the things they advised her to do was lose weight -- systematically and under medical supervision, since there had been insinuations that Vega's death was related to crash dieting. "Since tatay-tatayan ko naman ang marami sa kanila noon, ang palaging inaano nila sa akin is magpapayat. Kaya feeling ko noon, nararamdaman ko yung sinasabi kay Julie Vega."

And yet, Judy Ann didn't give in to the pressure. She honestly didn't think she was fat. When she was younger, she didn't go on any diets. She refused to, thinking there was no reason to deprive herself of the pleasures of food because she was still young. That was something she could worry about later, when she entered her teens. So she went on her merry way, eating what she pleased and rationalizing that by telling herself she would only be young once, and that there would be plenty of time to worry about her weight later. That time, like most young people, she was determined to live in the moment. "Mahal ko ang pagkain; puwede akong magpakasal sa pagkain. So naisip ko, bakit ko ide-deprive ang kabataan ko, eh hindi na ako makakabalik sa youth, di ba? So sabi ko, I might as well enjoy kung ano yung nandyan and then saka ko na lang aasikasuhin [ang pag-diet] kapag medyo dalaga na ako."

She grew bigger and bigger. But she still wasn't alarmed, not even when she hit her teens, and entertainment reporters started calling her names like "siopao", "mamon" and "aparador" in their columns. Still, the reaction wasn't instantaneous. These comments didn't really make her feel fat, nor did they make her feel insecure about herself or her weight. "Never ako naging insecure na mataba ako. Nung mataba ako, hindi ko naman naisip na mataba ako. Feeling ko pa rin naman sexy ako. Kahit mataba ako, feeling ko payat ako, mas payat lang kayo sa akin."

Judy Ann was as good as her word. She promised that one day, when she was older, she would lose the weight, and she did. It was the 2001 film Bakit Di Totohanin, where she played the role of a boxer, that got her started--not on dieting, but on the pleasures of working out. She learned how to do kickboxing and Muay Thai. She would get up in the morning, go to the gym and work ouot. Even after the movie ended, she kept on working out. "Na-enjoy ko lang din yung pag-wo-work out noon, kaya ako pumayat," she says.

She knew she had met her goal when soon a slimming capsule signed her up to be its celebrity endorser. Now, looking back, she has acquired enough confidence to laugh at herself. "Pagkalipas ng maraming taon, natatawa na lang ako. Kapag napapanood ko ang mga pelikula ko noon, nakakatawa naman talaga ang itsura ko," she quips. "Kahit ako, sinasabi ko, paano ako naging artista? Pero it was a phase of my life that I never regretted."

Taken from Starstudio magazine: Judy Ann Santos special issue

The 'Men' In Her Life

How does a Judy Ann Santos love?
The answer is, just like everyone else.

On this late Tuesday afternoon, under the shade of a nearby tree, outside a café in Quezon City, the bride-to-be -- it is about eight weeks to the rumored date of her wedding to Ryan Agoncillo -- is trying to hold back the amusement in her voice as we look back on the loves of her life, onscreen and off. There are the leading men: Wowie de Guzman, the late Rico Yan, and Piolo Pascual. But we are more interested in the ones we don't know about. These are the ones she has never spoken of, until now.

Her first crush was a neighbor in Antipolo. He was the brother of her best friend. The guy was oblivious to how Judy Ann felt about him. They would play bahay-bahayan with the stocks from the family's supermarket in Tanay, Rizal after it closed down. She would take her little packets of flour and bottles of patis and soy sauce and pretend to be fixing a meal for him. It was her earlier version of a kilig moment.

When Judy Ann went to school at Mount Carmel College in Quezon City, she was just like other teenagers who had her little crushes and suitors. Unfortunately, the boys found it hard to get past Ate Binay, Judai's trusted yaya who was tasked to take care of her and her siblings Jeffrey and Jackie after Mommy Carol left for Canada to work. Ate Binay took her job so seriously that few guys had the courage to pursue Judy Ann. But Judy Ann was even more scared of her than the boys were. "Kasama ko si Ate Binay, hindi ako puwedeng magpaligaw," laughs Judy Ann. "Matindi ang takot ko kay Ate Binay. So ano lang mga naranasan ko, yung papadalhan ka ng love letters."

There were some lucky guys who earned Ate Binay's trust without even trying. Judy Ann mentions a "W" -- one who was an actor, and one who was not. The non-actor came first, but he wasn't Judy Ann's first love. We try to pry his name out of the recesses of Judy Ann's memory, but she giggles like a shy schoolgirl and says it was Ate Binay who had a crush on him! "Nung time kasi na 'yon, ang mga lalake lang na puwede lumapit sa akin ay kung sino lang 'yung bet niya [Ate Binay]. Si W na hindi actor, bet niya. Si W na actor, hindi masyado."

Then she adds, almost as an afterthought: "May M & M bet ako na hindi nila alam, at wala namang may alam noon maliban sa aming dalawa."

The talk starts to really flow now. The memories come in a rush, starting with her team-up with Wowie de Guzman. The two of them together were a force. They became the number-one loveteam of the mid to the late 90s, making a string of box-office hits that included Sana Naman, Kung Alam Mo Lang, Wow Multo, Mara Clara: The Movie, Esperanza: The Movie, Paano Ang Puso Ko, Muling Ibalik Ang Tamis Ng Pag-Ibig, Kasal-Kasalan Sakal-Sakalan and Dito Sa Puso Ko. Through all their projects together -- and even with other leading men who came after Wowie -- Judy Ann learned how to maintain a certain detachment. She would refuse to invest too much of herself and her emotions because she didn't trust herself to make the right judgments. There was one man that friends warned her against getting involved with, but Judy Ann didn't listen. Her friends turned out to be right in the end. "Binalaan talaga nila ako na 'Wag na, babaero 'yan.' Pero naging malambot lang ako, at gu-mive in. Tatanga-tanga din ako."

So she learned the tough way relationships go in showbiz. She began to doubt if long-term relationships were possible at all in the business. Perhaps, relationships were to be taken on a "per project basis"-- that once the movie or TV show was over, so was whatever bound them together. It was the bitter truth, despite how close she thought they were many of her relationships ended with the script. Wariness set in. Judy Ann would change her phone number after a project, just to make the moving-on process easier. This was before Ryan came into her life. She acquired a toughness that she adopted as part of her personality. "Hinahayaan ko lang, na 'yun nga, per project basis lang ito. Ine-enjoy ko na lang. Ayoko kasi masira ang trabaho ko. Nasanay na rin ako. Naging bato ako."

Her friends became so concerned over how these so-called 'relationships' were affecting Judy Ann that they tried to introduce her to different men. One set her up on a blind date. Judy Ann was very tired from taping, but she went along with the idea out of loyalty to her friends, taking two chaperones with her: designer Paul Cabral and makeup artist Juan Sarte. During the date, Judy Ann could barely keep her eyes open. She kept nodding off. Turns out that the guy was planning to run for a political position, and being seen with someone of Judy Ann's stature would do wonders for his campaign. That relationship quickly went nowhere.

In or out of showbiz, Judy Ann's problem when it comes to relationships is that she is more prone to trust and love then to distrust and detach. "Hanggang ngayon, di ko pa na-ma-master yung idea na don't trust too much. Ako kasi, kapag nagmahal ng tao, 110 percent ang trust na ibibigay ko. I don't know if it's a good attitude, pero ako ito, eh. Maraming beses na rin nasira ang tiwala ko sa tao, at nasaktan ako, pero paano mo malaman kung di mo susubukan, di ba? Minsan, kailangan mo din masaktan para matuto.

Taken from Starstudio magazine: Judy Ann Santos special issue

Palaeontology

is the scientific study of FOSSILS which allows information to be collected on how organisms lived, what they looked like and how they evolved with time. Fossils are found in sedimentary rocks and occur throughout most of the geological record.

Taken from Dictionary of Science

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Paleontology (British: palaeontology) is the study of prehistoric life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments (their paleoecology). As a "historical science" it tries to explain causes rather than conduct experiments to observe effects. Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. Fossils found in China since the 1990s have provided new information about the earliest evolution of animals, early fish, dinosaurs and the evolution of birds and mammals. Paleontology lies on the border between biology and geology, and shares with archaeology a border that is difficult to define. It now uses techniques drawn from a wide range of sciences, including biochemistry, mathematics and engineering. As knowledge has increased, paleontology has developed specialized subdivisions, some of which focus on different types of fossil organisms while others study ecological and environmental history, such as ancient climates.

Body fossils and trace fossils are the principal types of evidence about ancient life, and geochemical evidence has helped to decipher the evolution of life before there were organisms large enough to leave fossils. Estimating the dates of these remains is essential but difficult: sometimes adjacent rock layers allow radiometric dating, which provides absolute dates that are accurate to within 0.5%, but more often paleontologists have to rely on relative dating by solving the "jigsaw puzzles" of biostratigraphy. Classifying ancient organisms is also difficult, as many do not fit well into the Linnean taxonomy that is commonly used for classifying living organisms, and paleontologists more often use cladistics to draw up evolutionary "family trees". The final quarter of the 20th century saw the development of molecular phylogenetics, which investigates how closely organisms are related by measuring how similar the DNA is in their genomes. Molecular phylogenetics has also been used to estimate the dates when species diverged, but there is controversy about the reliability of the molecular clock on which such estimates depend.

Taken from Wikipedia

SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE

When i'm with someone, I really like
Someone I can confide in.
Being with her is always a delight,
My words and actions show then.
Whence I'm all alone I always sigh
Sitting by my dreams.
I always let the days go by,
Funny, though it seems.
You came along from somewhere
And turned my life around.
Now the grass is greener,
Now that a friend/love is found.
Since then I knew you were special,
Somebody dear and can't forget.
Although loving you seems unreal,
That's something I'll never regret.

Gilbert Rombaoa, HS410

Taken from The Bosconian Forum

I am a 9-year-old girl who has everything I want. I have loving parents and grandparents and would like to know how to show my appreciation.

A. We appreciate your taking the time to tell us how happy you are. Go ahead and tell your parents and grandparents what you told us. Next to "I love you," the words "thank you" are some of the most pleasant to hear.

Also show your appreciation by your actions. Being helpful, obedient and kind will not go unnoticed. Even though they will love to hear words of thanks, they will be absolutely sure of your sincerity by your actions. Thanks for your letter!

- Answer prepared by Victor Kubik, a minister of the Worldwide Church of God

Taken from Youth 90 magazine

How to Get a Boss

If you don’t have a job, but would like one, here are some things you can do to prepare for the working world.

Make a list of your skills. These may be technical, like typing, being able to operate a cash register or 10-key machine. They may involve special knowledge you’ve gained through classes or other activities such as sewing, cooking, repairing things, running a slide projector or working in a photographic darkroom.

Whatever your skill, have your teacher, club adviser or school counselor write a letter of recommendation stating what your skills are, what type of machines you can operate and so on. Take copies of these letters with you to your interviews.

Narrow your search. Do you want a job only to make money or do you want to gain experience in a certain area? Do you want an outdoor or indoor job? What hours can you work?

Prepare yourself. Type up your resume and make sure you have appropriate clothes for the job interview. Take a deep breath and…

Start looking early. For a summer job start looking at least a month before school is out. Ask friends, relatives and teachers if they know of any job openings. Look through the want ads and watch bulletin boards. If you want to work at a specific place, go see them to find out if they’re hiring. Even if they’re not now, when a job does open up they may remember your making that extra effort.

Make a good impression. Be on time for your interview, don’t chew gum and try not to be too nervous. Let your energy and enthusiasm show! Don’t be afraid to admit you lack experience, but explain that you have the desire to learn.

Don’t give up. Keep trying. Check back with a few places to see if anything new has opened up. Stay positive and you’ll soon be cashing your first paycheck!

- By Kathy Johnson

Taken from Youth 90 magazine